Pierluigi Paganini
March 06, 2015
A bad news for the US military, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) confirms that, following a the data breach of the German telecom company SIGA Telecom and an AAFES contractor occurred on March 5, data related nearly 98,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe may have been exposed.
Hackers accessed names, addresses, emails and technical information belonging to the military personnel stationed in Europe and held by an on-base cell phone concessionaire.
“The Exchange learned on February 11 of a data breach of customer information held by concessionaire SIGA Telecom,” declared the AAFES spokesman Chris Ward said in an email Friday.
According to the AAFES spokesman the breach hasn’t exposed financial information about the military personnel, and it seems that stolen data were not being used in fraudulent transactions.
“There was no financial information released,” Ward said. “To date, there is no evidence of fraudulent use of the information.”
In response to the data breach, SIGA immediately took its systems offline. The company reported the incident to the German authorities to advantage the investigation and prevent further damages. The ongoing investigation is followed by AAFES officials too, that are providing all the necessary support to SIGA executives.
This phase is critical to collect information that could help the investigators to identify the threat actor behind the attack, its technique and the motivation.
As part of the incident response plan, AAFES urged SIGA to notify its customers, set up a telephone information line, develop a remediation plan and perform a security assessment within 90 days.
“The investigation is ongoing.” Ward added.
The German telecom company SIGA Telecom also notified nearly holders 27,500 active accounts of the incident.
(Security Affairs – AAFES, SIGA data breach)
Data Breach / November 21, 2024
